FONTANA – Over the next two weeks, the top drivers in NASCAR will not be named Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson or Dale Earnhardt Jr.

They will be the likes of Dennis Gannon and Gary Hartley – who pilot the transport trucks that shuttle cars, parts and equipment back and forth across country during the lengthy stock car racing season.

During a typical week, the transport driver's life is packed with far more than just miles – which are close to 100,000 annually. The driver is also responsible for truck maintenance as well as inventory, which includes everything from rags and bottled water.

But these are not typical times in NASCAR racing.

The cruel schedule-makers have seen fit this year to follow the Daytona 500 with Nextel Cup races at California Speedway and Las Vegas – sandwiched around a week off that most teams will use to practice near their Charlotte, N.C., bases.

And the big guys' two cross-country round trips are easy compared to the second-echelon Busch Series teams – who head to Mexico City after today's Stater Brothers 300 before going to Las Vegas, then back home to North Carolina.

Busch teams will actually be met by a second set of transporters in Laredo, Texas, on Monday. Those trucks will be ferrying the Mexico City cars to a staging area on this side of the border before the trip to the first NASCAR event to be run in Mexico.

The mileage numbers are staggering.

A Nextel Cup team will log almost 9,600 miles in the 24 days between the end of the Daytona 500 and returning to North Carolina following the March 13 Las Vegas race. At 60 mph, that is 160 hours on the road.

And a Busch Series team will log 10,300 miles – not to mention the 6,000 miles the support trucks will travel on two round trips between North Carolina and Laredo.

It should be noted that the drivers and crews fly.

"A lot of people are going to be seeing the billboard," said Gannon, the lead transport driver on one of two Mexico City-bound Busch Series cars owned by Richard Childress Racing.

"This will be the most amount of miles I can remember piling up over such a short time span. And it's complicated a bit by the equipment switch we have to do at Laredo, although the team has it pretty well laid out."

For while the logistics of a Nextel Cup team's two runs west are fairly simple – the transporters return to North Carolina with what they carried west – the Busch sojourn is complicated by the fact that the Mexico City race is a road course event in between two oval events.

That requires a different set of cars – and because of the time constraints, a second set of transporters.

"If Mexico City hadn't fallen in between California and Las Vegas, we would probably have kept the transporter out there with the cars unless there had been an accident and we had to return home," Will Lind, the general manager of the Childress Busch Series team, said yesterday from the team's shop in Welcome, N.C.

"But we're loading the four cars and equipment we'll need for Mexico City into a trailer here today. It's 1,500 miles both from here to Laredo and from Fontana to Laredo. The trucks will leave from both sites right after Saturday's race and meet Sunday."

Once they meet, the cars coming from North Carolina will be packed into the truck headed for Mexico City. The Busch Series cars used today will be returned to North Carolina, where they will be replaced with the cars needed for Las Vegas. Those cars will then head back toward Laredo.

Meanwhile, the Busch Series teams will head to Mexico City in five 10-car convoys – complete with security ahead and behind.

"A tire truck and maintenance truck will also travel with the convoy," said Gannon, who co-drives with Hartley in five-hour shifts. "The roads are decent right until you get to Mexico City. And you're not allowed to drive big trucks in the city during the day."